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PROCEEDINGS 



OF TIIK 



THURSDAY-EVENING CLUB, 



/<?, . 



©n Hjc ©ccasion of tlje ©eatf) 



OF 



HON. EDWAED EVERETT. 




BOSTON: 

W I I, SOX AND SON, PRINTERS. 
1865. 






EDWARD EVERETT 

Died on the 15th of Januaky, A.D. 1805, 
Aged 71. 



At a meeting of the Thursday-Evening Club, on January 26, 1865, 
at the house of Mr. Garpner Brewer, it was agreed, in accordance 
with a resolution offered by Hon. G. Washington Warren, that 
the remarks made that evening, on the occasion of the death of 
Mr. Everett, should, with the consent of his family, be printed for 
private distribution among the members. 



PEOCEEDINGS 



THURSDAY-EVENING CLUB 



DR. WARREN'S REMARKS. 

Gentlemen, — Since the last meeting of this Club, 
death has visited us ; and, in the person of our friend 
and President, has called away the first citizen of our 
Commonwealth. 

Honored alike at home and abroad, his loss will be 
felt throughout the length and breadth of the civil- 
ized world ; and his name will justly stand among the 
most distinguished of all ages. 

Again and again, during the last week, has his 
eulogy been pronounced, in terms far more adequate 
to his merits than any which I can employ ; yet here, 
in this circle of friends, we once more contemplate 
him in the private and social relation which he bore 
to this Association. 

The peculiar organization of our Club — designed 
(to use the words of Mr. Everett, as spoken here on a 
former occasion) to bring together persons of different 
professions and pursuits, to converse and communicate 
with each other on the scientific improvements of the 



6 



day, and other topics connected with social culture 
and progress ; thus uniting the active and the pro- 
fessional, the scientific and business classes of the 
community in a friendly circle — has been successful, 
in no common degree, in combining refined social en- 
joyment with mutual improvement in knowledge. 

The objects of such an association were fully 
appreciated by Mr. Everett ; and, from the very com- 
mencement of its meetings, his polished eloquence 
and rare conversational powers have greatly con- 
tributed to its success. Especially to be remembered 
are the noble eulogies in which he commemorated 
the removal by death of several prominent members 
of our Club ; and we all remember, with gratitude and 
admiration, the splendid tribute, which, on the late 
decease of Mr. Frederic Tudor, he paid to the mem- 
ory of the friend at whose house, only two we6ks 
before, we had been so hospitably entertained. His 
illustrations of literary and historical subjects, with 
which he constantly favored us, are among the hap- 
piest reminiscences of our meetings ; always felicitous 
in themselves, and often doubly impressive as emanat- 
ing from one who had himself been an actor in the 
scenes which he described. 

The first meeting of this season was held at his 
house, on the anniversary of the landing of our pil- 
grim forefathers ; and, in a style clear and masterly, 
even beyond his usual manner, he drew a new and 
vivid picture of that humble beginning of our na- 
tional existence. Only a fortnight ago to-day, I 
received a note from him, regretting much that he 



was unable, owing to what he thought a shght illness, 
to be present at the meeting of that evening. 

Of the punctuality with which, as President of the 
Club, he opened the meetings, you are all aware ; for 
he well knew the value of time when measured by 
such results as he was accustomed to attain. 

Feeling myself entirely incapable of doing justice to 
an occasion like this, I have yet been unwilling to let 
the evening pass without adding my feeble testimony 
to his entire faithfulness as a member and presid- 
ing officer of this Association. I leave to a gifted 
member of our Club the grateful task of giving fit 
expression to our sense of the great loss which we 
have sustained. 



Mr. Whipple said : — 

It is certainly fit, gentlemen, that the sense of be- 
reavement which this city and the whole nation have 
felt in the death of Mr. Everett, should find emphatic 
expression in the Club of which he was the honored 
President. Known to every member as the most 
exquisitely aff"able of presiding officers ; a chairman 
with the gracious and graceful manners of a host ; 
ever ready to listen as to speak ; and masking the 
eminence, which all were glad to acknowledge, in 
that bland and benignant courtesy, of which all were 
made to feel the charm, — his presence gave a peculiar 
dignity to our meetings which it will be impossible 
to replace, and impressed on all of us the conviction. 



8 



that, to his other gifts and accomphshments, must be 
added the distinction of being the most accomplished 
gentleman of his time. Indeed, it is probable, that, 
in this quality of high-bred and inbred courtesy, which 
we all have such good cause to admire and to remem- 
ber, may be found the explanation and justification of 
some thing's in his character and career which have 
been subjected to adverse and acrimonious criticism ; 
and, in the few remarks I propose to make, allow me 
to throw into relations to this felicity of his nature, 
the powers and achievements which have made 
him so widely famous, and, what is better, so 
widely mourned. 

Mr. Everett was born with that fineness of men- 
tal and of bodily organization, the sensitiveness of 
which is hardly yet thoroughly tolerated by the world 
which still profits by its superiorities. There was 
refinement in the very substance of his being ; by a 
necessity of his constitution he disposed every thmg 
he perceived into some orderly relations to ideas of 
dignity and grace ; he instinctively shunned what was 
coarse, discordant, uncomely, unbecoming ; and that 
internal world of tlioughts, sentiments, and disposi- 
tions, which each man forms or re-forms for himself, 
and in which he really lives, in his case obeyed the 
law of comeliness, and came out as naturally in his 
manners as in his writings, in the beautiful urbanity 
of his behavior as in the cadenced periods of his elo- 
quence. The fascination of this must have been felt 
even in his childhood, — for he was an orator whose 
infant prattle attracted an audience ; and he may be 



said to have passed from the cradle into public life. 
To a swiftness and accuracy of apprehension which 
made study the most delightful and self-rewarding of 
tasks, he added a general brightness, vigor and poise 
of faculties, which gave premature promise of the 
reflection and judgment which were to come. By 
some sure instinct, the friends who seemed combined 
in a kindly conspiracy to assist and to spoil him, must 
have felt that they had to do with a nature whose 
innate modesty was its protection from conceit, and 
whose ambition to excel was but one form of its am- 
bition for excellence. The fact to be considered is, 
that, in childhood and in youth as in manhood and 
age, there was something in him which irresistibly 
attracted admiration and esteem, and made men desir- 
ous of helping him on in the path his genius chose, 
and to the goal from which his destiny beckoned. 

It will be impossible here to do more than indicate 
the steps of that comprehensive career, so full of dis- 
tinction for himself, so full of benefit to the nation, 
which has been for the past ten days the theme of so 
many eulogies : — the college student, bearing away 
the highest honors of his class ; the boy-preacher, 
whose pulpit eloquence alternately kindled and melted 
men of maturest years ; the Greek Professor, whose 
knowledge of the finest and most flexible instrument 
of human thought extorted the admiration of the 
most accomplished of all the translators of Plato ; 
the fertile Writer and wide-ranging Critic, whose 
familiarity with many languages only added to the 
energy and elegance with which he wielded the re- 



\ 



\ 



10 



sources of his OAvn ; the Representative of Middlesex, 
whose mastery of the minutest details of political 
business was not more evident than his ready grasp 
of the broader principles of political science ; the 
Governor of Massachusetts, whose wise and able 
administration gave a new impulse to the cause of 
education and to some of the most important of the 
arts of peace ; the Ambassador, who co-operated with 
his friend, the great Secretary, in converting the provo- 
cations to what would have been one of the most 
calamitous of all wars into the occasion for negoti- 
ating one of the most beneficent of all treaties ; the 
President of Harvard, bringing back to his Alma 
Mater the culture he had received from her in- 
creased an hundred fold, and presenting to the 
students the noble example of a scholarship which 
was always teaching, and therefore always learning ; 
the Secretary of State, whose brief possession of office 
was yet sufficient to show with what firmness of pur- 
pose he could uphold American honor, and with what 
prodigality of information he could expound Ameri- 
can rights ; the Orator of all " occasions," scattering 
through many years, and from a hundred platforms, 
the rich stores of his varied knowledge, the ripe 
results of his large experience, and the animating 
inspirations of his fervid soul ; the Patriot, who ever 
made his scholarship, statesmanship, and eloquence 
serviceable and subsidiary to the interest and glory 
of his country, and who, when would-be parricides 
lifted their daggers to stab the august mother who 
had borne them, flung himself, with a grand supe- 



11 

riority to party prejudices, and a brave disdain of 
consequences to himself, into the great current 
of impassioned purpose which surged up from the 
nation's heroic heart; the Christian philanthropist, 
who, through a long life, had been the object of no 
insult or wrong which could rouse m him the fierce 
desire for vengeance, and whose last public effort was 
a magnanimous plea for that " retaliation " which 
Christianity both allows and enjoins : — all these 
claims to honor, all this multiform and multiplied 
activity, have been the subjects of eager and emu- 
lous panegyric ; and little has been overlooked in the 
loving and grateful survey. 

Such a career implies the most assiduous self- 
culture ; but it was a culture free from the fault of 
intellectual selfishness, for it was not centred in 
itself, but pursued with a view to the public service ; 
and the thirst for acquisition was not stronger than 
the ardor for communication. Such a career also 
implies a constant state of preparation for public 
duties ; but only by those whose ambition is to get 
office, rather than to get qualified for office, will this 
peculiarity be sneeringly imputed to a love of display. 
Still, the vast publicity which such a career rendered 
inevitable would have developed in him some of the 
malignant or some of the frivolous vices of pubUc 
life, had it not been that a fine modesty tempered his 
constant sense of personal efficiency, — had it not 
been that a certain shyness at the core of his being 
made it impossible that his self-reliance should rush 
rudely out in any of the brazen forms of self-assertion. 



12 



And this brings me back to that essential gentleman- 
liness of nature, which penetrated every faculty, and 
lent its tone to every expression, of our departed Pres- 
ident. This gave him a most sensitive regard for the 
rights and feelmgs of others, and this made him in- 
stinctively expect the same regard for his own. He 
guarded with an almost jealous vigilance the reserves 
of his individuality, and resented all uncouth or un- 
warranted intrusion into these sanctuaries which his 
dignity shielded, with a feeling of grieved surprise. 
In his wide converse with men, even in the conten- 
tions of party, his mind ever moved in a certain ideal 
region of mutual courtesy and respect. It was to be 
anticipated, that, in the rough game of politics, where 
blows are commonly given and received with equal 
carelessness, and where mutual charges of dishonesty 
are both expected and unheeded, such a nature as 
Mr. Everett's should sometimes suffer exquisite pain ; 
that his nerves should quiver in impatient disgust of 
such odious publicity ; that he should be tempted at 
times to feel that the inconsiderate assailers of his 
character — 

" Made it seem more sweet to be 
The little life of bank and brier, 
The bird that pipes his lone desire, 
And dies unheard within his tree, 

" Than he wlio warbles long and loud, 
And drops at Glory's temple-gates ; 
For whom the carrion-vulture waits 
To tear his heart before the crowd ! " 

In this sensitiveness, refinement, and courtesy of 
nature, in this chivalrous respect for other minds, and 



I 



/ 



13 



tenderness for other hearts, is to be found the pecu- 
liarity of his oratory. lie was the last great master 
of persuasive eloquence. The circumstances of the 
time have given to our public speaking an aggressive 
and denouncing character, and invective has con- 
temptuously cast persuasion aside, and almost reduced 
it to the condition of one of the lost arts. This is 
undoubtedly a great evil, for invective commonly dis- 
penses with insight, is impotent to interpret what it 
assails, and fits the tongue of mediocrity as readily as 
that of genius. It is true that the mightiest exem- 
plars of eloquence have been those who have wielded 
this most terrific weapon in the armory of the orator 
with the most overwhelming effect. Demosthenes, 
Chatham, Burke, Mirabeau, men of vivid minds, hot 
hearts, and audacious wills, have made themselves the 
terror of the assemblies they ruled, by their power of 
uttering those brief and dreadful invectives, which 
" appal the guilty and make bold the free," — 
which come like the lightning, irradiating for an 
instant what in an instant they blast. Perhaps the 
noblest spectacle in the annals of eloquence is that 
in which the mute rage and despair of a hundred 
millions of Asiatics found, in the assembly responsible 
for their oppression, fiery utterance from the intrepid 
lips of Burke. But such men are rightly examples 
only to their peers ; a certain autocracy of nature is 
the animating principle of their genius; and, when 
they are copied simply by the tongue, they are likely 
to produce shrews rather than sages. Mr. Everett 
followed the bent of his character and the law of his 

3 



I 

\ 



14 



mind when he aimed to enter into genial relations 
with his auditors, and to associate the reception of his 
views with a quickening of their better feelings, and 
an addition to their self-respect. Mount Vernon, the 
poor of East Tennessee, the poor of Savannah, attest 
that his greatest triumphs were those of persuasion. 
And in recalling the tones of that melodious voice, 
whose words were thus works, one is tempted to 
think that Force, in eloquence, is the mailed giant of 
the feudal age, who, assailing under a storm of mis- 
siles the fortress of his adversary, makes the tough 
gates shiver under the furiously rapid strokes of his 
battle-axe, and enters as a victor ; while Persuasion, 
"with his garland and singing robes about him," 
speaks the magical word which makes the gates fly 
open of then* own accord, and enters as a guest. 

It is but just, gentlemen, that our lamented Presi- 
dent, the source of so many eulogies, should now be 
their theme ; that his joy in recognizing eminency in 
others should be met by a glad and universal recogni- 
nition of it in himself. And, certainly, that spotless 
private and distinguished public life could have 
closed at no period when the heart of the whole 
loyal nation was more eager to admire the genius of 
the orator, and sound the praises of the patriot, and 
laud the virtues of the man, than on the day when 
his mortal frame, beautiful in life and beautiful in 
death, was followed by that long procession of be- 
reaved citizens, through those mourning streets, to 
that consecrated grave ! 



15 



Bishop Eastburn said : — 

I ask the indulgence of my fellow-members of the 
Club for a few moments, while I add to the eloquent 
words that have been spoken my own humble tribute 
to the memory of our late illustrious President. Mr. 
Everett was kind enough once to say to me, that he 
wished I would sometimes offer something, at these 
meetings, as a contribution towards the instruction of 
those who should be present. My reply to him was, 
that, surrounded as I always found myself here by so 
much science and wisdom, I felt disposed rather to sit 
as a silent listener ; and I cannot help a solemn and 
tender feeling in the reflection, that when now, for 
the first time, I am complying with his request, it is 
to utter a few words of remembrance over his recently 
opened grave. 

I beg to call your attention, gentlemen, in the few 
words I shall say, to one or two points in Mr. Everett's 
illustrious career which have not been dwelt upon by 
the speakers who have just addressed us, — and which 
seem to me to present him in an aspect eminently 
worthy of study by the rising youth of this nation. 

I very often thought, during the life of our distin- 
guished President, and have thought more especially 
since his death, of the shining example he has set of 
the assiduous cultivation of classical learning, as the 
chief ingredient in efficient education, and as the great 
means of giving superior abilities a commanding 
influence over men. It was this that gave the charm 
to Mr. Everett's oratory, and carried home with power 



16 



his advocacy, as a statesman, of public measures, and 
his addresses in behalf of those efforts for the relief 
of suifcring humanity to which he devoted the closing 
years of his life. He seemed to enter fully into those 
views of the advantage of classical pursuits put forth 
by the great Sir Robert Peel, in a discourse delivered 
by him on being installed as Lord Rector of the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow, and which I remember reading many 
years ago, — where he speaks of the benefits of classi- 
cal, as distinguished from mere mathematical training ; 
and shoAvs the tendency of the latter to narrow the 
mind, and to indispose it, in regard to a certain class 
of subjects, to receive any other than a species of 
evidence of which these subjects are not susceptible. 
But, besides this, Sir Robert exhibited, in a striking 
manner, the inestimable value of the study of the great 
masters, by a review of the course of Cicero, whose 
wonderful oratory received its perfection, and its 
power of swaying men, from his cultivation of the great 
models of Grecian poetry and eloquence. Now Mr. 
Everett, as I have said, is a great example in this 
respect, and ought to be held up as such before the 
young men of this land. And, if he shall be generally 
followed, we shall hear less, in the pulpit, on the 
platform, and on deliberative floors, of that rant and 
bombast which pass with some for eloquence, but 
which are as offensive to good taste as they are barren 
of effect. Mr. Bullock, in his address at Faneuil Hall 
on the day before the funeral of our departed Presi- 
dent, dwelt with great force and eloquence upon this 
way in which Mr. Everett trained himself for influ- 



17 



ence, — showing that his classical fiuish was not some- 
thing standing by itself, and apart from his distinction 
as a statesman, but was the main element in creating 
that distinction, and in giving him the power which 
he possessed in his signal public career. And, gentle- 
men, who has not felt the control exerted by his 
brilHant, yet restrained, chastened, and simple diction ? 
His oratory, sparkling with ornament as it was, was 
at the same time a perfect specimen of the shniolex 
munditiis. So that, whenever we heard him, it was 
like looking at some noble Grecian temple, in the 
presence of which the eye is not distracted hither and 
thither by tawdry and vulgar details, but takes in at 
once the exquisite whole^ and is charmed with the 
beauty of its architectural lines, and the fair symmetry 
of its proportions. 

But, before I sit down, allow me to detain you for 
a few moments longer by reminding you of another 
feature of Mr. Everett's career, which ought to be 
impressed on the youth of this country. I refer to 
the fact, that this great man achieved his triumphs, 
and produced the results which we have witnessed, 
by a life of constant and laborious industry. He 
eminently taught by his example, that they who 
would either attain eminence, or, what is infinitely 
more important, would urge mankind onward to 
noble purposes, must not rely upon the native genius 
with which God has gifted them, but must discipline 
their faculties by unremitted labour. My fii'st sight 
of Mr. Everett was forty-three years ago, when, in 
1822, he came to New York to deliver the Sermon 



18 



at the opening of a place of worship of his denomina- 
tion. I had not then entered on my own professional 
course ; and, with the curiosity and enthusiasm of a 
youth desirous of getting • a near sight of so eminent 
a man, — for even then he was eminent, although but 
twenty-eight years of age, — I took a position, after 
the service was over, in the porch, in order that I 
might study his countenance as he passed out into the 
street : — and, as he walked by me with his slender 
form, in gown and band, with his curling auburn hair, 
and his fine contour of head and features, I thought 
him the most attractive specimen of radiant classical 
beauty I had ever beheld in my life. Now, gentle- 
men, many of us have been witnesses of his course 
from that mornino: of his life down to its recent close. 
And what has this course been ? Has it been an 
indolent resting upon the consciousness of great 
natural endowments'? No. Has it been a course 
marked by fitful and impulsive resort to study? No. 
It has been a life of unintermitted labour — of con- 
tinual storing of the mind — of daily addition to that 
wealth of resources which was to be the instrument 
of power. I have touched upon this feature of Mr. 
Everett's distinguished life, because, as I have already 
observed, I think it should be placed distinctly before 
the young men of this country ; showing them for 
their instruction, that influence, and consequent 
usefulness, come not from intellect alone, however 
marvellous, but from intellect disciplined, regulated, 
and made eflficient, by the toil which ' scorns delights, 
and lives laborious days.' 



19 



I thank you for the permission to present these 
thoughts to your attention ; for I felt that I could not 
refrain from adding my humble tribute to this remark- 
able man, here in one of those assemblies which he 
has so often adorned with his presence, and charmed 
with the contributions of his eloquent lips. 



Dr. A. A. Gould said, — 

I am sure that each one of us here associated must 
feel thankful to the gentlemen who have so faithfully 
and gratefully delineated the exalted character of our 
late President, and especially as they recall to us his 
interest in our meetings, and the many contributions 
he himself made for our entertainment and edifica- 
tion. The breaking out of the rebellion bore so 
heavily on his health and spirits, that he expressed 
some misgivings as to his ability to meet with us, and 
even as to the judiciousness of continuing the meet- 
ings of the Club. At the preliminary meeting this 
year, however, he seemed quite enthusiastic in view of 
our coming entertainments ; and you will all of you 
attest to the peculiar geniality with which he opened 
our winter's gatherings at his own house. 

I venture to propose, what I have no doubt will 
find an affirmative response from every one, that 
the gentlemen who have addressed us be requested 
to furnish copies of their remarks, to be transmitted to 
the family of our late President, as a testimonial, from 
the members of this Club, of their deep sense of 



20 



indebtedness to him for his conntenance, and his nu- 
merous instructive and entertaining contributions at 
their meetings, as well as of his exalted private 
worth and public eminence. 




PROCEEDINGS 




OF THE 




THURSDAY- K V KiNlXG 


CT,UB, 


©n tfjc ©ccaston of tfje Bcatl^ 




OF 




HON. EDWARD EYERETT. 


BOSTON: 




WILSON AND SON, PRINTERS. 




1865. 





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